On 3/3/2010 3:15 AM, Martin McCormick wrote: > I started using the vinux distribution of Linux right > around the first of the year and really like it. I work as a > systems engineer for Oklahoma State University and so end up > doing a lot of strange things to computers as I try to get them > to behave as we want them to. One of the things I had had a > little trouble with under speakup was accessing serial devices > at 9600 baud or lower because the speech under speakup sounded > strange to put it mildly. I did a test one day in which I set > the serial line speed to 600 baud between the Linux computer and > another Linux computer I was using for tests. The speech turned > in to spelling which confirmed what I suspected was the trouble. > > As one who wrote a screen reader which I used under DOS > for many years, I knew that there should be a rather short delay > in which incoming data are accumulated without trying to speak > them. Too much delay and the screen reader sounds sluggish. Too > little and it thinks each character should be handled as a > single character. > > After reading the speakup documentation, I set the > trigger-time delay to 100 milliseconds and this made a great > difference. Setting it to 200 milliseconds makes the 9600-baud > connection sound quite normal. This is almost 1/4 of a second, > however, so you probably will want to set it back to 10 > for normal operation as it starts to get a bit sluggish. > > I am so glad speakup gives access to these parameters as > this is a prime example of how one set of parameters does not > fit all situations. > > The screen reader I wrote for my own use was written in > 8086 assembler. It did a pretty decent job driving an Echo > synthesizer but it was time to modernize. The Vinux distribution > has given new life to several computers which are not quite up > to running the ubuntu Live CD and Orca. I don't like to see > still usable equipment go to waste so Vinux has really filled a > nitch. > > Thank you for these tips first of all. I would like to learn more about creating and developing Screen Readers for Linux OS in general & also for specific distributions. Could you please suggest a good online material to start with. Thanks in advance T. G. J. Rukmal.
